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I think perhaps my biggest business mistake. I’m going to call it, for want of a better word, ego. As in, I’m the man, or I’ve got my head in the sand, or closed mind or I know best. Really, there are few business owners that are completely mentally stable. I think if they were they wouldn’t have started a business. There is something inside each of those people that have started a business. They’ve got a belief in themselves, justified or otherwise that makes them feel they can do it. Essentially the success or failure of any business comes down to how the business owner controls their ego. I call it the head stuff, what’s going on in their head. You know, overcoming that fear of failure, having an open mind to new possibilities, or worse,control over confidence – over their self-confidence. This for me has personally cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.The first $100,000 that was easily identifiable came after September 11 and we were just coming off the back of making $200,000 net profit in four months and thinking, “Right,absolutely, we’ve go this business thing sussed”. We’re doing great and then the planes crash into the towers and for the next six months our revenues went south. We’d been growing 20% month-on-month from the previous year and it dropped to only 40% of the previous year. So companies stopped spending money big time. But the challenge was here, as I had my head in the sand and didn’t go about stemming the bleeding at that time. So six months goes by and that $200,000 profit we’d made was down to $100,000. So that was actually the first thing about realising I had my head in the sand and thinking, “She’ll be right” but not really doing anything there to stop it.Also at the same time a business accounting partner left, so he had a decent payout as well. But anyway, then the other thing was I went to a five day boot camp, an entrepreneur boot camp over in Aussie. I came out with these completely unrealistic goals, to partially retire in six months. My confidence was up so I started hiring people to replace me in the business, shifted to new premises. Plus to add fuel to the fire, I also won a second Deloitte Fast 50 and then won the Ernst & Young,Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.Then I really thought I was the man. I was on TV, radio and just I believed my own press and my self-confidence just grew to new stratospheric heights and I started spending money on growing the business but basically what I ended up doing was growing the overhead. I hired people and started new companies and I knew best and I didn’t need any outside advice. My head was so far up my arse I just couldn’t see anything. Really, it was bad. And I completely had taken my eye off the clients – the people that actually make the business exist and I was haemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. So,at the start of 2003 I had to fess up. I had to fess up, hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone and I had to put my hand up and take responsibility,otherwise I was going to go broke and be out of business, because it is amazing how quickly you can dig a hole for yourself.I tell you, it makes me ill just recollecting it. You need to have an appropriate level of confidence, okay, and lots of resilience. I mean for me to get out of that situation I needed to have confidence that I Could do it and the resilience to put up with the — basically the pain ofit. It was just hard work.Yes, that is the biggest lesson. It’s like getting your head out of the clouds and just getting a bit real about where you’re at.That’s interesting, but that is one part of the process about the ego getting too big, but what about the other side of ego, because it can hold you back as well?Well, there are people that go about their business having the same year, year after-year. They are in a circle of sequels, because they’ve got this ground hog day happening of each year making about the same amount of money, plus or minus $10,000 or $20,000. Andthey’ve got something that’s holding them back. They know they’ve got things they need to do but, fear is holding them back, or it could just be they’re in the wrong vehicle as well; just slogging it out. And There is such a thing called as dumb persistence. You’ve got to be persistent, but up to a point where you can be in the wrong vehicle for your skills and abilities and you are earning basic wages when you should be doing something else.But it is, yes, snapping out of that circle of sequels. And often that is linked to the other syndrome of knowing it all.That’s a dangerous thing as well, because that means that the business has reached its full potential. And until a person is prepared to listen to outside input then it is doomed for a mediocre existence.I’ll put this in: the person who is unwilling to change has just reached their maximum potential.Exactly the same from a personal level to a business level and generally a business is about the business owner, where they’re at is where the I know I was reluctant to bring in outside advice. I mean, for goodness sake I that three degrees and I was Young Entrepreneur of the year,what could anyone else tell me that I didn’t already know about my business?Yes, but how wrong was I? And it’s also, you know, that saying ‘to know and not to do, is not to know at all’.As a business owner you’ve got no one to be accountable to.That’s a big syndrome that was there. The other side of bringing people in from the outside is accountability. As a business owneryou’ve got no one to be accountable to. So if you have someone there, then you actually get more stuff done – and also expertise that you just don’t have.Because we’ve all got our strengths, we’ve all got our weaknesses.And it is plugging those weaknesses and playing to your strengths.Really, for a small business to get bigger this has to happen.Like you need to let go of being the control freak and, “I know it all” to bring outside people to actually get you to the next level to break on through.Even for you in your property, you’ve had to, bring in experts.I remember I used to only ever employ people who I was smarter than, because I couldn’t control people who were smarter than me – that was my theory. But over a number of years we dumbed the business down. I woke up one day and I went, “No, hang on. I must only employ people now who are smarter than me”. Right?And whatever their level of expertise is, you know. And so now, I am looking at up-skilling the business all the time – people smarter than me.When you can push your ego aside great things happen. That’s been my number one lesson now. It’s interesting because I see it happening in other businesses and other people and I’m going, “Look out here”. Yes, so it’s keeping it under control.